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To The Rescue! - 3/3/08

What to do when your hard drive crashes and you think you’ve lost all your photos

This Article Features Photo Zoom

Just last week, I had an experience that I knew was bound to happen eventually (even though I always secretly hoped it never would). My hard drive failed. I was searching for an archived photo on an external disk, and in midsearch, the computer locked up and I had to reboot. I don't know which came first-the crash or the drive failure-but it didn't really matter: my disk was no longer readable. The good news is that I have a duplicate backup on optical media, so after I download the data from the 33 DVDs that are my backup's backup I should be back to square one. But what do you do if you don't have a backup for your backup? Or even worse what if you haven't even downloaded the photos yet and the CompactFlash card fails? How do you recover your data? There's a lot of great information online for do-it-yourselfers, like the info at www.harddrive-repair.com, but I'm a bit too timid to disassemble a disk, and I'm not yet ready to send it in for a professional to work on. Sure, there are also plenty of programs out there that are designed for data recovery-some even come standard with the purchase of CF cards-but what experiences have you had with them? Do you have any favorite programs perhaps, or maybe a horror story that turned into a miraculous recovery? What did you learn from your data-rescue experience, and how do you do things differently now? I know one thing: I'll never again complain about having to backup my backup. And I may investigate a speedier method than the 33 DVDs.

Photo courtesy of www.harddrive-repair.com

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